David Markson - Epitaph For A Dead Beat

“Did you hear me, buster?”

“We got to it a lot fester the last time without the drama,” I said.

DiMaggio was kneading his right fist with his left hand. “You got a gun?”

“Four. All home in a drawer next to the Three-in-One oil.”

“Make sure.” He spoke to Toomey without looking at him.

Toomey was at my side. “You 11 have to get up—”

I did what he told me, chewing my lip. He ran me down quickly, then gestured.

“Put the cuffs on him,” DiMaggio said.

Toomey’s hand was still raised. “Oh, now look, Joe—”

DiMaggio came a step closer. His lips were bloodless. Toomey sighed almost inaudibly, finally reaching toward a hip.

I held out my wrists and the metal went on and locked, not tightly. Toomey didn’t look at me. Just once I was going to meet two cops and the reasonable one was going to have the rank.

DiMaggio’s eyes were as dark as wet tar. He was being as outraged as Captain Bligh when Clark Gable set him adrift in that dory. “You lied to me, Fannin.”

I shook my head wearily. He ignored it.

“You used Captain Nate Brannigan’s name and he okay’d you when I checked. So it isn’t just a precinct sergeant the lie fixes you with.”

This time I grunted. He didn’t want answers anyhow.

“You found the Welch body and I let you convince me you weren’t working on anything. The way I read it, the things you didn’t see fit to tell the department Tuesday night might just have prevented the Grant girl’s death and this one too, whoever this one is—”

“I didn’t have a job Tuesday,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me a second time, Fannin. I don’t like to be suckered.”

Toomey had found something to contemplate on Grant’s shoe, most likely a hole. “Why don’t we find out what he’s got to say first, Joe?”

DiMaggio kept measuring me. His forehead was slightly pocked. He flexed his fingers.

“Ten minutes, no more.”

“I’ll need closer to thirty.”

“I’ll know damned well when it stops meaning anything.” He turned toward a chair. “You start at the beginning, Fannin, you got that?”

“Don’t tell me how to tell it, DiMaggio.”

He whirled back. I hadn’t moved.

Toomey was still at the body. “Tallest man since Wilt the Stilt,” he said idly.

“Maybe he’d rather tell it under the lights,” DiMaggio said. “Maybe he thinks it’s more romantic that way. Or maybe he thinks he’ll get somebody else instead of me. Is that it, Fannin? You think because it involves two precincts the boys from Central will take over? Your buddy Captain Brannigan maybe? Well, I’ll let you in on a departmental secret, how’s that? Central’s a little busy tonight, you understand? It so happens this case is mine — so I’m the baby you’re going to have to chat with wherever we do it. And wherever we do it, I still think you’re dirt.”

“The corpse was named Ulysses S. Grant,” I said quietly. “He hired me tonight to find his daughter, Audrey Grant.”

“The corpse was named — why, you fatuous son of a bitch, if you think I’ve got time for a goddam joke—”

Toomey sprang across quickly, stopping him with a hand. “Hold it, Joe—” He flipped open the sandwich-sized wallet

I’d seen when Grant was in my office. “Ulysses S. on his voter’s registration.”

294

DiMaggio curled his lips, controlling himself. “The rest of it, Fannin.”

“I was finished.”

“What the hell—”

I’ve identified my client and told you what kind of a job I was on. I didn’t even have to say that much without a lawyer, not once you put these cuffs on. Although for the record I had a lot more in mind until about twelve seconds after you brought your bedside manner through that door.”

He got around to it then. It was a hard enough punch but I was set for it as well as possible. I caught it along the upper jaw. I hit the cushions of Grant’s couch, elbows first, then slid to the floor with the cuffs biting.

That fluttered a few feathers again. I supposed I could always report him for disturbing evidence before his technicians got there.

Toomey was between us, but DiMaggio had walked off. “Let that team take him in,” he said tightly. “We got work to do here.”

Toomey opened the door and held it for me, saying nothing. DiMaggio was standing over the body with his back turned. I stared at him for a minute and then went out.

That baby was screeching again, or still. I heard it through only one ear. Toomey rang for the elevator. “That was pretty dumb,” he said.

I didn’t answer him.

“So he called you a liar. It ain’t such a highly illogical conclusion under the circumstances, you know. And you got to tell it anyhow, for Chrissake.” The door slid open and he chuckled as we got in. “On the other hand I suppose all we can legally slam you for is leaving that stiff downtown, since you’re right about not having to talk once we make you look like a suspect. If it turns out you’re clean the sergeant will sweat all night, wondering if you’ll mention the incident to your friend Brannigan. The Commissioner’s been pretty touchy about the rough stuff lately. Poor old Joe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Do me a favor, huh?”

“What’s that?”

“These cuffs — wipe my nose if I cry.”

Someone had taped a newspaper photo of Marilyn Monroe behind the door of the interrogation room. One of her eyebrows was raised, and she was pouting, and she definitely had something in mind.

They’d taken my cuffs off, but for forty minutes she had been my only company. Now Toomey was straddling one of the rooms two desks, and a severely combed civil service stenographer in a shapeless brown suit had just taken a chair near the far wall. It was 2:26. Behind the other desk a mountainous Laird Cregar type in shirtsleeves was considering me impersonally. His name was Vasella and he was a detective lieutenant. He had a chest like a tombstone.

His tone was completely neutral. “You’re ready to make that statement now, I assume?”

I nodded.

I’ve spoken to Nate Brannigan,” he said, “and he’s given me the same endorsement of you he gave Sergeant DiMaggio three days ago. He might be getting tired of it, which is neither here nor there.” He sat down. “DiMaggio told me what went on uptown. He also told me that he’d been handling a separate homicide entirely before your call came in tonight and hadn’t seen bed for thirty hours. I don’t offer this as any sort of apology, but I don’t like to work in bad air.”

He did not wait for any comment on my part, turning to the stenographer. He gave her my name, my office address and my state license number, reading from a sheet he’d brought in, probably my statement about Josie Welch. “Nothing between your previous declaration and the time you were retained by this Ulysses Grant?” he asked me.

“Nothing.”

“We’ll start there, then. You’ve done this before.”

I nodded again, taking a Camel, and then told it. I was able to forget Constantine’s request for silence, since the telegram had taken me off the hook in that regard, although I did skip the matter of Margaret Constantine’s exotic automatic. The whole thing took less than twenty minutes.

Neither Vasella nor Toomey had interrupted. Vasella had taken out a thick yellow copy pencil, which he clicked against his front teeth. “Turk is the keystone, of course,” he said. “But I’d be more comfortable if Grant’s money were all there was to it.”

“Why Turk?” I said.

He looked toward Toomey, who was lounging against the doorjamb. “After that party quieted down over there,” Toomey told me, “this swish who lives in the place, McGruder — he told us that Turk was married to Audrey Grant.”